


‘tis the damn season

by toddxnderson



Category: The Wilds (TV 2020)
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Tree, Crack Treated Seriously, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Ice Skating, Sharing a Bed, This is completely self indulgent, basically every trope in the book, i wrote this to make myself feel better and it worked, ish, sort of crack treated sort of seriously
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:13:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28292904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toddxnderson/pseuds/toddxnderson
Summary: it’s their first christmas, after everything. it only seems right that they spend it together.
Relationships: Fatin Jadmani/Leah Rilke, Martha Blackburn/Nora Reid, Shelby Goodkind/Toni Shalifoe
Comments: 48
Kudos: 292





	1. there’s an ache in you (put there by the ache in me)

**Author's Note:**

> so i was feeling kinda shitty about christmas this year and apparently the only solution i could come up with was writing a weird fluffy christmas fic for the wilds girls? so i did? i have no idea what this is tbh but HERE YOU GO
> 
> the other two chapters will go up after christmas (i know, not very festive, but i’m busy as hell)

It started with Fatin, because of course it did. A venting phone call from Leah became a half-serious invitation, which in turn became a coherent semblance of a plan- a Christmas together, Leah, Dot and Fatin, all squeezed into the small LA apartment the latter two had been renting since the moment the girls had finally been released from their month-long ‘investigation’. They’d make a whole thing of it; ice skating, Christmas tree decorating, a proper present exchange. Something to take their minds off the official, secondary investigation, the serious and emotionally taxing one, the one that was growing ever closer to proving actual links between the girls’ parents and the experiment, a revelation that was hitting Leah hard- perhaps harder than anyone else. Fatin and Shelby didn’t give a shit, Dot and Toni refused to speak about it, the twins had already enough problems to be getting on with, and no one really seemed to know what the hell was going on with Martha.

A nice, quiet Christmas. Enjoyable. 

But then Leah had made the fatal mistake of slipping a line or two about where she would be spending the season into a phone call to Shelby, who had mentioned it to Toni, who had complained about it to Martha, who, apparently, had ended up telling Nora, though it wasn’t clear exactly how or why. 

Between the fifteenth and the seventeenth of December, Dot fielded twelve separate phone calls from each of the previously uninvited parties, ranging from polite but heavy handed hints to direct confrontations _(Jesus, Dot, you really thought you could drop us that easily?)_ combined with a second round of last minute arrangements, of flights and blowup mattresses and as much random food as they could afford and carry. It wasn’t like she could say no, exactly- these were the closest things to best friends she’d ever had, the ones she’d been through hell with twice over. It seemed sort of petty not to invite them round for Christmas. 

The Unsinkables, back together again. 

The trip from Berkeley to LA was overpriced and, frankly, fucking exhausting. Her parents had offered to drive her in yet another desperate attempt at reconciliation, but Leah had refused. They’d done enough, she’d told them, the edge to her voice unmistakable.

She started to regret it somewhere around hour four. Both Fatin and Dot had repeatedly warned her against attempting to park anywhere in the city, so she’d made the assumption that a train couldn’t be _that_ bad, could it?

She’d been wrong. So, so wrong. The carriage was sticky hot, shoulders brushing up against her far too close, and the claustrophobia of it reminded her of that ugly underground interrogation centre, the one she had thought was her sanctuary, only to find she couldn’t have been any more wrong. Still trapped in the burning building, she thought with a sour flash of humour. 

For all her discomfort, her destination stuck out clearly in her mind, a monument she kept in her sight at all times. Fatin, and Dot, and the others; everyone she could actually trust, all together in one place. Somewhere she could keep an eye on them.

Upon disembarking, it was a twenty minute walk from the train station, rucksack clutched tight to her body. At any time in her past she would likely have made the journey with earphones in, blocking out the world and turning it into nothing more than a background blur, but now that sort of disconnection made her uncomfortable- being unaware of her surroundings was a luxury her subconscious would not afford her these days. Besides, the image of Jeanette stuck painfully in her mind, a movie looping on a single frame; the plane going down, all systems failing, screaming and praying and the acidic chill of panic, all with that girl in the centre, earphones firmly stuck in, eyes closed. Leah bit the inside of her cheek.

The crowds were thick, pressing in at all sides, and the path was a little more confusing than she had anticipated, factors that sent her spiralling into that old familiar terror. More than once she pulled out her phone ready to call one of the other girls, but she hated the kind of person that would make her seem enough to put it back in her pocket without a second glance. And finally, out of the all-too-similar buildings she spotted a number, a door just as had been described to her on the phone, and a breath rushed from her lungs in an unbearable surge of relief. Fuck. Finally. 

She was buzzed in without comment, which immediately set her further on edge, if that was even possible. The dread was hot and spiked her throat. This had been a mistake. 

The mantra stuck in her brain as she ascended the multiple flights of stairs, _this was a mistake this was a mistake this was a mistake_ pounding in time with her heart, an ugly drumbeat, sickening and syncopated. 

The door to the apartment was slightly ajar, and Leah eyed it with suspicion. It would be just their fucking luck for someone to break in on the very day everyone was due to arrive, and although the logical explanations floated readily to the surface of her mind, the sight still set her on edge- she’d spent too much time looking at doors, locked and unlocked, and she found herself involuntarily turning her head to check if anyone was behind her. A gloomy corridor. A small panel of sunlight pouring in from a cobwebbed window. Her palms were slick with sweat. 

“Leah?” 

She shot up at the words, fear fizzing palpable on her tongue. A girl stood in the door, resting against the frame, a look of confused amusement on her face. 

“Dot,” Leah replied, hardly bothering to mask the relief in her voice. The other girl beat her to the hug, wrapping her arms around her and holding fast. “Shit, I missed you.”

“Yeah, me too. Me too, idiot.”

They pulled apart, half-laughing in some indescribable wash of emotions. Dot gave her a sceptical look. “You ok?”

“Yeah, fine, fine. Not a lot’s going on, really.” 

Her lie was obvious enough not to prompt any real questioning. 

“You going to come in? Or are you planning on sleeping out here?”

It wasn’t the first time Leah had stayed in the apartment, but her visits were admittedly few and far between, and she noticed several major changes to the layout; a big antique mirror covered a messily painted wall in the living room area, and a battered but comfortable looking sofa occupied what had previously been empty space. Her eyes locked onto it, remembering the way the floorboards below it had looked the night she’d helped them unpacked, when they’d sat on it cross legged eating takeout, just the three of them. 

Dot noticed where her gaze lingered, and spoke into the silence, “We found it sitting outside a building a few blocks away, perfect condition. You don’t even want to know how we got it up the stairs.” 

Leah supplied the necessary laugh and outstretched a hand to stroke the yellow fabric, pretending she didn’t hear the stupid giddy ache that still gnawed in her stomach like hunger, the ache with a name. She opened her mouth to ask, but someone beat her to it. 

“Leah!” 

“Fatin!” Her voice broke halfway through the word and she felt herself seize up with embarrassment. She sounded pathetic. 

But Fatin had already slammed into her at top speed, grabbing onto her like she was drowning (Leah felt her chest tighten- shit analogy, shit analogy) and suddenly she found herself being pushed back firmly, the other girl’s face bright in her vision. 

“How are you?”

“Oh, uh, I’m good. You?” Leah answered. She very deliberately avoided Dot’s gaze.

“Yeah, good! All settled into the LA life. The prices are insane here, you should see how much I spent on a sandwich yesterday-”

The familiar ramble of Fatin’s train of thoughts was enough to settle any lingering doubts about the trip. It was safe here, safer than the unbearable awkwardness of home, and at least she wasn’t alone. The comfort of having the other Unsinkables around wasn’t one she’d counted on, but God she loved it, the secure and knowing intimacy of their stupid conversations _(“Like, it wasn’t even a good sandwich, Dot makes them ten times better-”)_. More than that, though, was the relief of knowing that she wasn’t alone in what had happened. There were others who understood. No one else ever seemed to. 

Her hand slipped up to pull her rucksack from her back, but Fatin, now monologuing about the perils of city parking, pulled it off her shoulders herself and carried it off with her before Leah had the chance. 

“Oh yeah, you’re rooming with Fatin,” Dot called. She’d slipped off to the kitchen and was stationed at the counter, cutting vegetables into long thin ribbons. “We, uh, did some shuffling around. I’ll be on the sofa in here, Nora and Rachel are going on the blowup mattress-” she gestured with the knife- “and Toni and Shelby are taking my bed for _privacy.”_

Leah followed Fatin into her bedroom. It was even more heavily decorated than it had been on her last visit, Polaroids clustered on the walls, posters peeling off the paint in varying degrees of disrepair, a handful of newspaper clippings bluetacked to the bed’s headboard. She inspected them briefly- all the articles about the experiment that had elected to use Fatin’s yearbook picture instead of the God-awful ones from immediately after their release. She let out a small huff of amusement. Despite all that had happened, there were some things that just didn’t change. 

She was just opening her mouth to deliver a stupid joke about Narcissus and the project they’d done in AP Lit that one time, but the buzzer pierced the air before she could speak and she jumped involuntarily, cursing under her breath. 

A muffled shout came from the kitchen. _“I’ve got it!”_

There was a beat of silence. Leah realised very suddenly that Fatin was staring at her, eyes sad and so very, very old.

“You too, huh?”

Leah laughed, but bitterness seeped into it. She couldn’t make this part normal. “Yeah. I don’t even know why I do it.”

“Me neither. I guess it’s just-” Fatin sighed, gesturing vaguely at the room, as though trying to encapsulate the entire world in a sweep of her arm- “everything.”

They stood quietly, the moment broken only by the unmistakable slam of the door being shoved open. 

“We should go.”

Nora and Rachel had already made it to the sofa by the time they reached them. They were sitting almost protectively close to one another, knees practically overlapping, and they reminded Leah vaguely of the twins from the Shining in that strange only-just asymmetrical way. Dot was engaging them in very dull conversation, something about Yale interviews and also a tennis tournament, and oddly, they seemed to be giving an equal proportion of answers. Despite some expected discomfort, they appeared relatively fine. Normal. 

Fatin had just started asking Nora about something she had read on Twitter, a fact about herons that sounded completely made up, when the buzzer went off. Leah counted the heads that startled in surprise; four. 

“Fuck, that must be the lovebirds,” Dot said, pushing herself to her feet and moving off to answer it. 

_(“It said they have_ claws _on their_ wings, _which is first of all creepy as hell, and secondly, like, scientifically impossible, right?”_

_“That’s hoatzins, not herons. Where did you read that?”)_

The door swung open to reveal not two but three figures in the corridor, standing stiffly side by side: Toni, hair loose and paired with a quiet scowl; Shelby, whose stubble was starting to grow back into what could charitably be called a pixie cut; and Martha, eyes fixed firmly on the floor. 

There was a moment of intense stillness. Leah thought it might crush her. 

Fatin was the first to speak. “Oh, hey! Martha, we didn’t think you were gonna make it?”

This was clearly the wrong thing to say. Toni’s scowl hardened and Shelby began to pick at her nails.

“Yeah, neither did we,” Toni replied. 

“Martha, we can put you up next to Rach and Nora. There’s plenty of space.” 

No one commented on the obvious lie. The girls found seats on various ledges and pieces of furniture, Martha deliberately placing herself on the opposite end of the room and pulling out her phone. 

“So, since everyone’s here at last, all back together again-” Shelby said, squeezing Toni’s arm- “I thought we should talk about the investigation. Just make sure we’re all on the same page.” 

The silence that followed was stony and absolute. 

Dot sighed, selecting and discarding her words with great care. “Shelby, I don’t think- I’m not sure anyone’s really in the mood. It’s been a long day. That said, Rach, do you wanna-?”

“Oh, yeah, sure.” 

The two rose from their seats and headed towards the door. Nora half-stood in tandem with her sister, before freezing awkwardly and forcing herself back down with a thump. Toni quirked an eyebrow. 

“They’re getting the Christmas tree,” Fatin explained, already anticipating the question. “There’s a little place a few miles away that sells them. I’m pretty sure Rachel’s been planning this for months.” 

Shelby frowned. “Do y’all have decorations?”

“Oh, yeah. Dot brought a few when we moved in, and I bought some sparkly shit in a sale last week. Leah brought some baubles, too.”

Toni snorted. “What, on the fucking train?”

The tiny injection of humour was a breath of relief for the conversation, and Leah managed a mostly genuine laugh. “Yeah. I unzipped my backpack to get some water and the old man next to me looked in and just saw, like, two dozen snowflake decorations. He got off at the next stop, which may or may not have been a direct result of that.”

There were a few grins, but the conversation that followed was comfortably dry. With Dot gone, they were slightly rudderless, and for all Fatin’s jokes, veering from innuendos to downright filthy, none of the laughter felt total or complete when there was a gaping hole in the fabric. Martha wasn’t a huge contributor to the discussion, either, a painfully obvious fact despite all the attempted masking by the other girls, who joined in a little too enthusiastically, their answers too cheery, smiles too bright. 

Dot and Rachel were gone an hour. At some point, the rather exhausting talk came to a halt and Shelby turned on the TV- the Christmas special of a random show, one none of them had seen before. Nora and Rachel spoke between themselves almost inaudibly, squished up together on the sofa, murmuring, while Martha sat beside them, scrolling wordlessly through her phone. It reminded Leah, oddly, of some of those long days on the island; the ones without responsibility, once the chores were completed and all that was left to do was lie around and try to keep the boredom away. No wonder it had been so easy to lose sight of sanity. 

She was beginning to consider cracking a joke about it to the group when a loud crash sounded from the hallway, followed immediately by an echoing “Fuck!”. Leah and Fatin barely glanced at each other before jumping out of their seats and sprinting towards the door. 

A large Christmas tree was lying on its side at the bottom of the stairwell. Rachel stared at it disapprovingly while Dot yanked at it in a futile attempt to return it to a vertical position, spraying pine needles across the tiles. 

“Told you we should have got a plastic one,” Fatin called, skipping down the steps two at a time. 

“Fuck you, it’s a good tree. Smells nice. We’ve just got to...” Dot looked up to where the others had gathered around the banister. “...get it up there.”

“And how the fuck are we supposed to do that?” Toni asked, more than an edge of hilarity to her voice. 

“I don’t know. Rachel?”

“We could- there’s definitely no elevator?”

“Oh, yeah, let me just go and check,” Dot replied, dripping with sarcasm. “Anything else?”

“I mean, Shelby and Toni are strong enough. If they get down here, lift the bottom...”

Shelby nodded from the top of the stairs. “That could work.”

“Ok, let’s try. Dot, you take the middle, I’ll guide the top.”

They assumed their positions around the tree, lifting in unison, branches sticking to their clothes. 

“Shit, it’s heavy.”

“Stop complaining. Shelby, you need to go left a bit.” 

The tree jerked wildly into a wall. 

“You’re going to bend it!”

“It’s a fucking tree, it can cope.”

“Toni, go right.”

“I can’t see anything, the branches are in my face!”

“Just keep going.”

The first landing was less than a foot away when a loose branch slid underneath Shelby’s foot, sending her flying backwards and colliding painfully with the floor; the tree, now missing one of its crucial support beams, corkscrewed and slipped out of Rachel’s hand, and it was all Dot and Toni could do to step out of its path as it fell heavily to the ground.

There was a stiff silence. 

Toni, muffled by the tree, called, “Shelby? You ok?”

“Yep,” came the reply, “just a little stuck.”

Rachel pinched the bridge of her nose. “Jesus Christ.”

Nora’s face peeked over the upper banister. “Maybe we shouldn’t lift it like that. The staircase is too narrow, it won’t be able to get past the bend.”

“Then how?”

“Um, I was thinking-” she produced her notebook, holding it over the other girls so they could see the neat diagram she’d scribbled inside it- “maybe a pulley system would work best? We’d need some supplies.”

Dot quickly ascended the stairs to get a better look at the illustration. She examined it closely, frowning in concentration, before nodding in approval. “Yeah, that looks good. There’s a bucket in the kitchen cupboard, don’t know about rope, though.”

Fatin spoke from her position stretched out on the upper landing. “There’s rope in my bedroom. It’s pretty long.” 

Rachel snorted. “I’m just- I’m not gonna ask.”

“Good call.”

“Nora, Dot, you go ahead and put it together. I think I need to rescue Toni and Shelby first.”

Nora’s contraption was simple but effective. Four lengths of rope were knotted tightly to a wide bucket in which the tree sat, supported by a broken broom handle that Martha had found leaning against one of the trash cans. Toni, Shelby, Dot and Leah stood in a square on the landing that led to the apartment firmly pulling at their own rope, each of which was balanced on the banister in order to minimise the necessary effort. Nora oversaw the operation from a distance, while Rachel hovered at the bottom, watching for any sign of potential disaster. 

“Okay,” Rachel said, channelling her coach’s voice, “on three. Three, two- hey, I didn’t say one!”

But the tree was already rising through the air at an alarming speed, wrenching wildly from side to side as the girls at the top alternated the force and effort they were applying- pine needles scattered like confetti onto Rachel’s head, shaken loose by the violent motion, forming a carpet of green on the tiled floor. 

“Shit!” someone exclaimed, and the tree dropped a good foot in height before lurching back upwards again at an equally dangerous speed. 

“It’s going to fall!”

“It won’t if you all just slow down.”

“Nora, watch out!”

The girl ducked out of the way just in time as a branch snapped back into place where her head had been just moments prior. 

“Ok, stop! Hold the ropes still,” Dot called, sizing up their chances of getting the monstrous thing over the banister without killing anyone. “Any more ideas?”

“I think someone’s going to have to grab it,” Shelby frowned. 

“Who?”

Fatin felt the six pairs of eyes on her a full three seconds before she realised what was happening. “Nope. Absolutely not.”

“C’mon, you and Martha can work together. It’ll literally take two seconds.”

“Unless I plummet over the edge to my death.”

“Which won’t happen,” Rachel protested.

“You don’t know that.”

“Look,” Dot cut in, “if you do plummet to your death, you can have as much of my pizza as you want. Ok?”

“I’m not gonna point out the obvious flaw in that deal, but fine.”

She sat up and pushed herself to her feet, moving parallel with Martha so that they had hold of a side each. In a single, synchronised movement, they swung it sideways so it tipped over the metal railing, steadying it while Dot and Leah grabbed the bottom branches. The bucket went clattering to the ground below. 

“This is heavy as shit,” Fatin exclaimed, panting. 

“Ok, everybody push. We just need to get it inside, then we’re done.”

“Someone needs to open the door!”

“Yeah, well, my hands are full. Rachel?”

“Hold on, I can’t get round-”

The tree continued to propel through the air at high speed, resisting all attempts to stop it. 

“Shit, it’s going to-”

In a single, deafening crash, it slammed into the neatly painted front door that Dot had laboured over for hours, taking the girls down with it. 

“Alright. We’ve got to be strategic about this,” Rachel said, pacing up and down the carpet while the others looked on. “We only have three bits of tinsel, one set of Christmas lights- they’re multicoloured, so don’t stare at them for too long- and about thirty baubles overall, plus the star for the top. I’ve drawn up a plan in Nora’s notebook.” 

Fatin flipped through to the page with the sketch. It was labelled and neat, and though it was not a particularly accurate rendering of a pine tree, it did the job. 

She looked up. “Cool, but how are we gonna decorate the top? It’s massive, and you’ve put, like, half the baubles up there.”

She received a glare in response. “Teamwork, obviously. It’s not hard. Just- I don’t know, get on each other’s shoulders, or whatever. Stick to the plan, and it’ll all be fine.” 

To their eternal credit, they did try. Dot and Leah allowed themselves to be led around by Rachel and a somewhat twitchy Nora, hanging decorations from their allotted branches and trimming them where they poked into the wall, but the novelty faded quickly and they slipped into their own haphazard definitions of ‘decorating’. Rachel’s elaborate plan lay strewn to one side, while Martha and Fatin threw tinsel at the tree with reckless abandon, and though they had previously been helped by Toni and Shelby the pair had snuck off midway though the effort, closing and locking the door to Dot’s bedroom. Leah had spotted a second set of blindingly vibrant Christmas lights and was attempting to dangle them over the upper half of the tree by standing on the arm of the sofa and using the string as a kind of lasso. Nora, far too short to reach the top branch, was in the process of clambering onto Rachel’s shoulders, plastic star in hand, ready to position it on the apex of the tree.

Dot stood back, hands on hips, inspecting their handiwork. Lights were dangling off it at bizarre angles, baubles scattered in an apparently random pattern, and the whole thing tipped to one side in a fashion reminiscent of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. She sighed deeply. 

“Fuck it,” she said. “Who wants pizza?”

The rest of the evening was significantly less frosty. The girls arranged themselves over various pieces of furniture to eat, talking inanely about anything other than themselves- pop culture, schoolwork, what little they knew about global politics- and it almost felt like the version of a friendship they had fallen into on the island, borne out of boredom and necessity but lovely nonetheless. They drifted off to bed one by one- first Martha, fast asleep on the stack of cushions that formed her makeshift bed, then Shelby, followed closely by a yawning Toni. Nora curled up on the blowup mattress and drifted off almost immediately, while Dot and Rachel conversed quietly, a haze of smoke from Dot’s cigarette rising up and obscuring the TV. A mutual glance between Leah and Fatin confirmed their next move, and they stood up together, moving quietly towards the bedroom, tiptoeing past the sleepers so as to avoid waking them.

A flash suddenly twisted into Leah’s vision- that first night after the crash, everyone huddled up alone, pushing past them all in a surge of panic as she raced to the shrill ring of the phone that called out into the darkness. 

She glanced down; Nora’s sleeping head was resting by her feet. Cautiously, and with a hint of embarrassment, she brushed her fingers across the front of her hair, tucking a loose strand back into place. The warm solidity underneath her hands was enough to push her back into the present, enough to ground her. She sighed quietly into the darkness. 

Fatin pulled up the covers and clambered into bed next to Leah, flexing her toes against the cold. There wasn’t a lot of space; she could feel sharp bony elbows digging into her side already. 

“Jesus, you’re freezing,” Leah gasped, rolling away and onto her back. 

“Sorry,” Fatin replied, sounding anything but. “You want the lights off?”

Leah hesitated just a moment long enough for her to take the hint. 

“I mean, you can if you want,” she said hurriedly, “it’s ok.”

“No, no, it’s fine. I don’t mind having them on.”

They lay underneath the pale shine of the electric light, shifting occasionally under the sheets. Leah felt that familiar dull ache once more, the cavern of it lurking just below the surface, and the words spilled out before she could catch them. 

“Are you alright? I mean, really.”

There was a long pause. 

“Yeah,” Fatin replied slowly, “yeah, I think I am. I mean, a couple of bits of jewellery don’t get you as far as I’d hoped, but it’s fine. I have a plan. And once the lawsuit’s done we’ll probably be set for a while.” 

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

A sigh from the other side of the bed. Fatin’s long, slender arm brushed past Leah as it settled across the girl’s brow. “I don’t know. I have a therapist. I’ll be fine.”

Leah couldn’t hold back a snort. “A therapist? In LA? How much did that cost?”

She could hear Fatin’s grin in her voice as she replied. “Ha, ha. Very funny. Now go to sleep. Rachel’s got some fucking team building exercise prepped for tomorrow.” 

“Oh, shit. Well, we need to be on our A game, or I’m not sure we’ll even make it to Christmas.” She let the silence hang there, softly, over their heads. Then-

“Fatin.”

“Yeah?”

“If you’re not, like- if you’re ever not alright, you can talk to me. Wherever I am, wherever you are. I’ll be here. You’re my- you’re my best friend, ok? I want you to be happy.”

Fatin rolled over so that she was facing her, and for a moment she seemed genuinely touched; the light cast long shadows down her cheekbones, lips bitten and full, eyes half-sad, half-unreadable. There was a scar to the left of her chin, Leah noticed suddenly, a small faded white line an inch long. 

“I feel like I should be the one telling _you_ that,” she replied finally. “But thank you. Seriously. And the same goes for you. I’ll be here. You know where to find me.”

Muffled chatter from the street below, passing traffic. “Yeah.”

A grin spread over her face like sunlight. “Now go the fuck to sleep. I’m serious.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Leah replied, pushing her face into the pillow. “See you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow, Rilke.”

Tiredness stretched outwards from her bones into her bloodstream, and she sank into the lazy gentleness that was now permitted her with little fanfare.

She woke in the dark, all the lights off, moon peeking in through the thin curtains. Awakening had fallen on her quite suddenly and without warning, as was usual, caused by a nightmare, she assumed, or maybe a noise from the street- she was a light sleeper these days- but as she lay in the silence trying to detect any hint of what had woken her, she became aware of a warmth at her upper arms, a soft weight balanced on her calf. 

Oh. 

Fatin’s fingers were curled carefully around her bicep, her stomach pressed into her back with tender certainty, one leg swung on top of her own. _Oh._

The throb of Leah’s chest abated, just a little. 

Her eyes closed.


	2. the road not taken looks real good now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the unsinkables go ice skating, with varying degrees of success.
> 
> featuring the age old question: is die hard christmas movie?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took so long to upload! i promise i will get this fic finished by the end of the twelve days of christmas if it’s the last thing i do. 
> 
> it might well be the last thing i do. i am the ceo of procrastination.

When she woke, it was to a rough shake on her shoulder. The space behind her back was empty, but the room was still filled with pre-dawn darkness. 

The figure standing in front of her came into focus. It was Rachel, mouth downturned in an irritated frown. 

“You need to get up. You slept through the alarm.”

“What?” Leah asked as she sat up, though tiredness blurred the words and they didn’t come out quite as intended. “What time is it?”

Rachel rolled her eyes. “Seven. C’mon, everyone else is already up.”

“Seven? Like, in the morning?” 

“Yeah?”

Leah stared at her in confusion. “What the fuck? It’s nearly Christmas, we don’t need to get up at _seven am,_ Rach.”

“Yeah, well, we’re doing it today. Get up, last warning. We’ve got somewhere to be.”

She turned and marched off into the living room, speaking loudly about timings and different routes to no one in particular, the smell of cooking eggs wafting slowly through the open doorway and into the otherwise empty bedroom. 

Grudgingly, she swung herself out of bed and followed Rachel, rubbing her eyes that had gone blurry with sleep. She hadn’t been lying; the others were all awake, in various states of dress, eating and talking and, in one case, hanging out of the window to smoke. Fatin was in animated conversation with Shelby, Nora quietly munching beside them and occasionally commenting; Rachel was arguing with Dot and attempting to force her back inside the apartment for fear someone’s AC unit would come crashing on her head like in that one TV show; Martha was poking at her scrambled eggs while Toni berated her in a low voice, not nearly loud enough for Leah to make out. 

She moved across to the stove to help herself to some breakfast, grinning at the snippets of conversation she caught on her way. 

“Merry Christmas Eve,” Shelby said as Leah dropped down onto the floor beside her. 

“Same to you. Why the fuck are we up so early?”

Fatin’s eye roll was almost an entity of its own. “Rachel has some kind of insane plan. We’re supposed to be leaving in like ten minutes. God, you should have seen her first thing this morning, I swear she had this evil glint in her eye. Wouldn’t be surprised if her plan was to take us to a remote spot and murder us all.”

Shelby snorted so hard she nearly choked on her eggs.

“Where exactly are we going, though?” Leah asked mid-mouthful. 

“Fuck knows,” Fatin replied. “She won’t tell me anything. I think she told Dot ‘cause she threatened to throw her out if she didn’t, but she keeps saying we’re not allowed to find out. It’s a surprise.” 

As if on cue, Rachel stood up and slapped her hand against her thigh in an attempt to grab the girls’ attention. “Alright, let’s get moving. And go to the bathroom before we leave, because I swear to fuck we are not stopping on the way.”

The walk was longer than any of them had anticipated, down streets after street crammed with holiday shoppers. Rachel spent the majority of the time staring at Google Maps and cursing under her breath, swinging the group wildly in different directions for close to an hour, adamantly refusing when the other girls suggested they ask for directions.

“Look, man, maybe we should stop for a while?” Dot finally interjected, after the fourth near-miss with a car. “Walking round in circles isn’t helping anyone.” She shot a pointed look at Nora, who seemed on the verge of collapse. 

The mere suggestion immediately hardened the determination on Rachel’s face. _“No._ We’re almost there. Any second now... it should be the next corner-” 

They veered past yet another gray office block, and as the barrier slipped out of sight a square came into view, strung thickly with Christmas lights that exuded a cheery golden glow dulled slightly by the morning sunlight. And in the centre of it, their destination:

An ice rink.

“Ok, we need to be quick. This was the only slot I could book and we’re already late, so let’s get moving, people.”

The process of hiring skates was surprisingly painless, mostly thanks to Toni’s innate ability to pick out the best deals, and they sat together lacing up their skates, Nora kneeling down to tie Rachel’s. 

Leah and Fatin hobbled across to the entrance together, skates clinking against the floor. 

“God, these feel like the worst high heels ever.”

Fatin stepped out on the ice, clutching the plastic barrier with all her might. One skate slid out in front of her, nearly causing her to overbalance and fall back, but the combined assistance of a sign advertising perfume and a giggling Leah managed to get her back into a standing position. 

“You’re seriously telling me you’ve never been ice skating before?” Leah asked once Fatin was finally in a relatively stable position. “You? Fatin Jadmani? The girl who’s swum with dolphins four times?”

“Yeah, my parents didn’t really see the appeal. They thought I was gonna crack my head open, or something.”

“Still enough time for that.”

“Perfect way to ruin Christmas. A nice trip to the ER at nine in the morning on Christmas Eve.”

Leah pushed off, wobbling slightly, moving across to help Nora onto the ice.

“Hey, how the hell are you so good?” Fatin called. 

“My parents made me take lessons when I was a kid. Thought they’d finally found something that would make me interesting. I was pretty shit but hey, maybe it came in handy,” she replied, Nora grabbing tight to her elbow with mortal terror in her eyes. 

“Humans are not built for ice. They are _not.”_

“Well,” Rachel started, pushing herself out onto the ice without concern, “today we’re testing that.”

Fatin made a face. “Oh, of _course_ you can skate.”

“First time, actually.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” 

Dot and Martha emerged from the flimsy plastic entrance to see the two sticking their tongues out at each other. 

“Woah, I sense friction,” Dot joked, stepping out onto the ice and grimacing. “Fuck, I can’t- ok, ok.”

“Cold?” Rachel teased. 

“Hey, I’m a Texas girl. I’m not used to the ice.”

“That makes the two of us,” Shelby called from the gateway to the ice where she stood, hand clasped firmly in her girlfriend’s. “To be fair, though, I do have a little experience. Pageants these days have all kinds of funny gimmicks.”

She stepped out and turned to help a skittish looking Toni onto the ice. 

“You look like a scared horse,” Shelby said, laughing. “Why are you so nervous? I thought you got ice all the time in Minnesota.”

“We do. Doesn’t make me any fucking better at skating on it.” 

“Oh, come on, I’m sure you’re not that bad.”

She was immediately proven wrong by Toni slipping forward just an inch further than she had the balance for and crashing through the ground, taking a just-stable Nora with her. 

Fatin gained her balance surprisingly quickly, surpassing Leah within the first twenty minutes of their session. 

“I’m a fast learner,” she said smugly, playfully batting at Leah’s arm. 

“You don’t fucking say. Keep this pace up and you’ll be at the Winter Olympics by Boxing Day.”

Together, they made a somewhat unsteady circuit of the rink, passing Nora and an exasperated Rachel _(“Come on, it’s not that hard, just don’t fall over,”)_ as well as Toni and Shelby, the former of whom had seemed to get over her nerves enough to make it to a spot underneath a sprig of mistletoe and the two were kissing, smiling into it. 

“Ugh. Happy couples. They make me sick,” Fatin grumbled. Leah couldn’t quite tell just how much humour the statement was supposed to carry. She said nothing. 

Their second trip round was slightly more disastrous. Leah’s limited experience had not impressed her greatly enough for her to remember how to stop, and though she had managed to crash into the wall rather than the toddler, she still received several dirty looks. Fatin was too busy laughing at her to notice the out of control elderly man barrelling straight for her, and suffered dearly for it.

Once they had recovered from their brush with public humiliation, the pair circled back round to find the others. Nora was still having very little luck with remaining vertical, despite all Rachel and Martha’s efforts; every few feet she lost her balance and her legs skidded in opposite directions leaving her dangling between the two girls, arms flailing, in an awful imitation of the splits. Leah opened her mouth to crack a joke, but just as they reached the small cluster Fatin stumbled, front section of the blade catching on the ice, and she fell forward in what felt like slow motion, crashing into both Nora and Rachel and the three slammed into the ice in a writhing pile. 

Rachel disentangled herself, and sat up, rubbing her head. She raised her eyebrows at Fatin. 

“You’re an actual hazard.”

“Ha, ha,” she replied, sarcasm so thick it was almost tangible. 

“No, I’m serious. Do you want a penguin?”

“A what?”

“A penguin. They’re these big plastic things you can use for balance. They have handles.”

Fatin scoffed. “I don’t need a _penguin.”_

Rachel glanced back at her sister. “Nora, do you want a penguin?”

“Yes. Yes, I want a penguin. Please.”

By the time Rachel had located, rented, and returned a penguin to her sister, Nora had already fallen over a further five times. 

“I don’t think you’re gonna be able to sit down after this,” Fatin joked after helping her up from a particularly painful slip. 

Rachel had managed to briefly pry Shelby away from Toni and the two had started racing around the rink at speeds veering on ridiculous, nearly knocking over several small children whose bundles of jackets did admittedly make them look rather like bowling pins. Fatin and Martha, for reasons unbeknownst to pretty much everyone, had started choreographing their own ice dance routine. Leah guided Nora to the edge of the rink, miraculously avoiding further disaster, and the two hung back at the barrier, panting. 

Leah felt the sudden, intense desire to spill out the entire contents of her heart; it seemed to burn white-hot under her skin, the happiness almost unbearable. She’d never thought they’d all live to see this moment, one of pure, unrestricted joy. How to go about saying she felt like she’d finally found home? How to say she’d never felt so free?

But the words couldn’t make it out of her throat.

“This is nice,” she settled for.

“Yeah,” Nora agreed, “it is.”

The rest of the day slid by in a haze of comfortable mundanity; Dot enlisted the others to assist her with the daunting mission of preparing the vegetables for the next day’s meal, a task that was approached vigorously by all, though not without complaint. A last minute shopping expedition took place led by Fatin and Toni, one that ended in a very near miss with a forty year old woman who had decided she was entitled to the carton of eggs they were buying, as those who had remained in the apartment were regaled with on their return. Surreptitious present wrapping took place behind the cover of furniture and cushions. A last minute rush of decorating was deemed necessary. A nice, normal Christmas Eve.

It didn’t last. 

How it happened itself was almost laughable; Martha had got up from the activity of choice (watching the end of Titanic and yelling out diving scores) when she accidentally stumbled over Toni’s hand, stepping on a finger and tripping herself, falling heavily into the sofa. 

“Fucking watch it!” Toni yelled, and the raw violence of it shocked the room into silence. While everyone had had their turn of being yelled at, she’d rarely raised her voice at Martha, and certainly never with the kind of bitter hatred that she now used. 

To everyone’s shock, Martha laughed. “So now you’re telling _me_ to watch it. Typical.”

Toni was at her throat in seconds. “Don’t you fucking dare bring that up, it was your fault-”

“Oh, so it’s my fault your temper’s gone to shit-”

“It’s your fault that apparently I’m not good enough to even be in your-”

“Enough!” Dot yelled. It startled them out of their anger enough to silence them temporarily. Martha looked almost ashamed.

Dot glared at Toni, hard and unmistakable, and pointed her index finger towards the nearest bedroom, the gesture’s meaning clear: _in. now._

Once she had closed the door behind her with a firm click, Dot sighed. “Listen, Toni, I know you’ve got your own shit to deal with and I don’t want to barge into stuff that’s not my business, but c’mon, man, you’ve got to tell me what’s going on with Martha. We’re all worried about her. And you.”

Toni bit her lip, conflicted, but relented. “Fine. It’s not- it’s sort of turned into a bigger deal than it actually is.” She paused. “Look, when we came back, Marty wasn’t ok. I don’t really know why. Something about what happened hit her pretty hard and she wasn’t- you know, right. She went to therapy and shit and I got a text from her saying that she had decided to cut off contact with everyone from the island. Including me.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. And obviously I was upset and pretty shocked, y’know, but if it’s what she thinks is best for her I don’t want to stop her. I want her to be happy.”

There was a brisk silence. Dot looked at Toni expectantly. 

“What happened?”

“Nora happened, apparently. Me and Shelby met up with Rachel when she was at a college open day a while back, and it turns out that Marty had been texting and calling Nora practically non-stop since we got back. Even more often after she cut herself off from all of us. Like, almost constantly.” She bit her lip. “She said they sounded super close.”

Without a word, Dot sat down on the arm of the sofa. 

“So obviously I was really fucking pissed. I called her a bunch of times but she didn’t pick up, so me and Shelby decided to go visit her. This was about a week ago. We got there, and Martha was- I don’t know. I’ve never seen her look like that, the way she opened the door. She- it wasn’t really like she was scared, more like she’d been dreading me showing up more than anything else in the world. I confronted her about it, obviously, but she didn’t really say anything, just stood there taking it, which made me even _more_ pissed. I don’t know, something about the way she was acting was just so fucked up, I couldn’t-”

She broke off, turning away, hand pressing against her mouth. 

When she continued, it was quieter, almost embarrassed. 

“I broke some stuff. I got mad. It was unfair on both of them, I know, but it was all so fucked up I just couldn’t bear it.” She let out a small, bitter laugh. “You know Martha and Nora are dating? Yeah. For about three months now, and she didn’t tell me. I had to find out through Rachel. Not once did she bother to tell me. We’re best friends, we’re like _sisters,_ and she cut me out just like that? Like it didn’t mean anything? Like she didn’t give a damn?”

Toni brushed back the ghosts of tears that had formed around her eyelids. “She apologised. That’s the stupid thing. She apologised for all of it, because she’s a fucking angel and she’s perfect, told me she was wrong to do what she did, just like that, and asked if she could come with us to LA. Shelby convinced me to let her come. For a minute I thought I was going to walk out the door and never come back. But I didn’t, and now we’re here, and I’m trying to figure out where the fuck that leaves me.”

Dot looked faintly stunned. “Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, unable to quite bridge the obstinate gap between herself and Toni. “Look, if you want me to speak to Martha-”

“No, no, you don’t need to do that. I want to- y’know, try and patch things up myself. We’re sort of getting there. Thanks for offering though.” Then, somewhat awkwardly, “you’re a good friend.”

“Thanks. Uh, anytime. Well, not anytime, but you know what I mean.”

By the time the group had finally settled down for their long-anticipated movie night, tensions had dissipated slightly, enough for Toni and Martha to sit in close vicinity with a reasonable level of comfort. Dot felt almost proud. 

“So,” Leah said, squeezing herself in between Nora and Fatin on the sofa. “What movie are we going to watch?”

“Die Hard,” Toni and Dot said in unison.

“Oh yeah, obviously,” Fatin agreed, nodding in approval. 

The rest of the room erupted. 

“That’s not a Christmas film!” Shelby said, playfully hitting Toni on the arm. 

Nora looked equally appalled. “No. We should watch Home Alone.”

Martha spoke from her corner, voice barely audible above the hubbub. “Home Alone is way better.”

“Woah, woah,” Dot said, “how can you say Home Alone’s a Christmas film but Die Hard isn’t?”

“They’re completely different!”

“How? Guy outsmarts multiple evil guys. It’s Christmas.”

Shelby shook her head in almost disbelief. “No, no, no. Home Alone is _Christmassy.”_

“Ok, you can’t just say _Christmassy_ without, like, specifying a little.” 

“I mean, there’s Christmas music, for one thing.”

“There’s Christmas music in Die Hard!”

“No one thinks of it as a Christmas movie though, do they? I mean it’s not exactly heartwarming.”

“Actually,” Nora cut in, “a press release showed that 1.3 million Americans watched Die Hard on Christmas Eve last year, beating Home Alone.” 

Leah threw her hands up in the air. “I know. Why don’t we watch It’s A Wonderful Life?” 

There was a resounding boo from the rest of the room. 

“What? It’s like, the original Christmas film.”

“It’s boring,” Toni groaned, flopping back into Shelby’s arms, “and it’s in black and white.”

“So?”

“So! It’s old!”

“That’s the point!”

“Alright, alright.” Shelby placed a calming hand on her girlfriend’s hair and smiled. “Look, we don’t need to get all aggressive over this. The most important thing is making sure we’re festive and happy.”

Dot smiled wryly. “Exactly. So let’s watch Die Hard.”

There was a second explosion of sound, immediate and absolute. Toni jumped to her feet to argue with an equally defensive Leah, tripping over Shelby’s outstretched leg and connecting with the floor, hard. Nora and Martha, giggling uncontrollably, started up a chant that was so out of sync it was mostly unintelligible. Rachel pushed herself up from the sofa, grabbed the remote control from its position discarded on the floor, and clicked on a title with such ferocity the button lodged in the controller. The starting credits of Elf began to play as Dot wrestled Toni away from Leah, both of whom had their middle fingers pointing at the other. 

“Shut the fuck up, we’re watching Elf!” Rachel yelled, and the room fell sheepishly silent. “Right. That’s better.”

Everyone slunk quietly back to their original places, half-serious threats whispered across the carpet and pillows grabbed from underneath heads. 

There was a small mutter, one that sounded suspiciously like a scathing criticism of Will Ferrell. A single glare was enough to put a swift end to any further dissent. 

By the time Will Ferrell and Zooey Deschanel had their happy ending fully dressed as elves, only Fatin remained awake in the living room. Toni and Shelby had long since abandoned the festivities, sneaking out of the apartment in a fit of giggles somewhere around the thirty minute mark, and were yet to return, and Nora and Martha had fallen asleep on top of each other on the floor, lying spreadeagled across the majority of the carpet. Even Rachel and Dot had succumbed to the comfortable lull of exhaustion, though they had made a reasonable effort to be neat about it and were tucked away in different corners of the room. And Leah. 

Fatin glanced down to the girl lying across her lap. Her eyes were squeezed tight and her mouth was just slightly agape and God, she looked so peaceful. Untouchable. 

Her hand drifted of its own accord to the girl’s forehead, stroked it lightly with her thumb. 

“Wonder what you’re dreaming about,” she murmured quietly, a hint of humour in her voice. “Better be me.”

There was no avoiding it. She hated the idea, but Leah really was blocking her way and she had hardly breathed for about forty minutes, scared of waking her; the credits had ended and she was staring blankly at the dark TV screen, listening to the ebb and flow of her best friend’s chest. She’d considered carrying her, but she realised quickly that that particular plan was doomed to failure. It was no use. She had to wake her up. 

She shook her shoulder as vigorously as she could manage. “Leah. Leah, sorry, you’ve got to get up.”

Leah stirred, groaning softly. She squinted up at Fatin. “Rachel?”

“Nah. Me.” 

“Oh. Why do we have to get up?”

“No, no, you don’t have to get up properly. You just need to get to bed.”

“Oh. Ok.” She stretched, yawned, swung one leg onto the floor then froze, eyes wide. “Have I been lying on your lap this entire time?”

Fatin snorted lightly, brushed a hand so close to Leah’s arm she startled like she’d been shocked. “Yeah. You didn’t last long. This morning must have tired you out.”

“Yeah, I guess.” She got to her feet with more than a hint of stiffness and glanced around the darkened room. “Shit, it’s a mess in here.” 

“Oh, God, I don’t even know what happened. I think Martha knocked into the Christmas tree and some of the baubles got smashed. Not that anyone bothered enough to pick them up.”

Leah practically leapt to her feet, and Fatin knew she wasn’t imagining the blush that spread across the girl’s face like sunburn. “I’ll do it. Might as well. You can go to bed if you want. Sorry for, uh, restricting your circulation.”

“What? No, I’m not leaving you to tidy up alone, don’t be stupid,” she replied, standing up just as quickly. “And don’t worry, you didn’t hurt me. It was kinda sweet.”

The speed at which Leah ran towards the Christmas tree would have been almost adorable if Fatin wasn’t so sure it was killing her inside. 

Cleaning the living room to a habitable standard was impossible while it contained four sleeping bodies, so the effort, while valiant, wasn’t particularly impressive. With the smashed baubles (six, Leah counted) finally cleared away, she had resigned herself to hunting on her hands and knees for the remote control, which had disappeared at some point between the film’s beginning and the scene where elf-lookalike Will Ferrell goes to jail. It was a difficult task, particularly with Martha’s head sitting unfortunately close to the edge of the sofa she was searching under, and she had almost given up out of sheer frustration when she spotted a small glint of gold from the dark. 

She squeezed her hand through the gap, pushed her arm in as far as it would go, and her fingers closed around cold metal; a hoop just smaller than her palm with a flimsy clasp. Fatin’s earring. The one that had gone missing months ago, according to an angry text she remembered receiving. 

With no small amount of effort, she forced herself back to her feet, throwing a glance behind her. Fatin was busying herself at the other side of the room, tucking away a stray bit of tinsel and humming softly, a tune that Leah half-recognised. 

She looked so beautiful like that, concentration pinning her forehead in a crease and a small smile tugging at her lips. More than beautiful- content. The one thing that neither of them had ever been, not before the island nor on it. 

Maybe now they’d finally found it. Maybe now it was enough. 

She started over to her, earring clutched tight in her hand, but in her haste she didn’t notice Fatin moving towards her at equal speed and the pair narrowly avoided collision, and oh, now she was giggling, the stupid idiot, didn’t she _know_ how that laugh stung in Leah’s chest?

And then she noticed the other girl glancing up, eyes catching on the small sprig of green plant that was tied above their heads in a red bow. 

Mistletoe. 

Oh. 

She knew in an instant what she had to do- what she had to try, anyway, regardless of the outcome, despite the fact that her heart had mysteriously relocated to her throat and was beating with such ferocity she thought it might choke her. 

“I’m-” A tiny, nervous huff of amusement escaped Leah’s mouth- “I’m gonna try something right now, and I can’t promise it’s gonna go okay.” 

Fatin’s eyes widened in sudden understanding. The incessant twinkle of the Christmas lights behind her glinted and reflected into a million shards, small coloured stars in an impossible sky. Leah inhaled and shut her eyes, pressing her whole body into the tiny crevice between the girl and herself.

Solid warmth met her lips, the soft pressure of reciprocation, and she knew she had struck gold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so it’s 1:30am here and i’ve been writing this non stop since like 10pm so pls forgive any typos or grammar/continuity issues bc i can barely see my screen at this point rip
> 
> also forgot to plug my twitter last chapter! it’s @toddxnderson and it’s mostly incoherent 
> 
> also also!! thank you so much for all the lovely comments on the last chapter- i haven’t had the chance to reply to all of them but they made me so happy <33

**Author's Note:**

> pls i have no idea what this is i am so sorry. 
> 
> coming up after the break: fatin vs ice rink, rachel and dot vs turkey, and secret santa *EXTREME* *GONE WRONG* *NOT CLICKBAIT*


End file.
